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ALICE COOPER — politics and bloodlust

ALICE COOPER ENJOYS underlining the band's "all-American wholesomeness" — it's there beneath the stage depravity — and when we last met he backed up his claims by noting: "Me and Dennis were on the track team in school. Neal was on the basketball team. Mike Bruce was an all-star football player in Arizona. Honest to goodness, he was a defensive end. And Dennis has got, like, 10 medals for long-distance running.

"We just fell into rock. We wanted to be in a band when we were sophomores in high school in Phoenix (about 15 years old).

"When the Beatles came out we decided, wow, that was a kind of neat thing to do. Then we got together, playing and singing, to see what we could do. I could write 20 volumes on funny things that happened to us when we first started — that just could never happen to anybody else.

"We've been doing a theatrical act for eight years. I used to sing the whole set from a bathtub sometimes, drenching wet.

"We used to do all kinds of crazy things, because we realised 'why be just a rock group, when you can be a rock group and do something to people'. They'll go home talking about you and saying, 'Wow, I really had a good time tonight, because they gave me something the other groups aren't. They actually gave me entertainment."

The band (sometimes called the Spider or even the Husky Babies) moved to California where Frank Zappa gave them a recording contract. The turning point, however, was when Shep Gordon and Joe Greenberg — two young, creative types — took over their management.

"We met Shep at a party the day before we were going to sign for management with Zappa and Herbie Cohen," Alice remembered. "He and Joe had come to L.A. from New York, looking for a group to manage. We just immediately got on together so well, we signed with them instead.

"Right off they said, 'Let's get one thing straight. We're not going to quit this thing until each one of us is a millionaire.' We said okay, and from then on that's how things went. We've got a little further to go. It takes a lot to become a millionaire nowadays, without getting killed on taxes."

The act was less than an overnight sensation. Much less.

"I think we had to create a legend, some kind of notoriety for ourselves before it could work," Alice said.

"I had to instill a lot of fright into people, because people like to be frightened and are entertained by the very idea of being frightened. They come to see us for the music. But they come because of the bloodlust, too, you know.

"Anyway, we just kept plugging away at everybody until we made them like us. You can't believe how many things we had to do.

"Shep and Joe went about $40,000 in debt. This is how bad it was. In Detroit, we had to borrow money to get gas for the car, so we could skip out of the hotel bills! That's the honest-to-God truth.

"We'd go to parties and steal food. Anything, just to keep alive. Me and Cindy used to live on one egg-salad sandwich a day between us." Alice breaks up in hysterical laughter, and Shep adds: "Now they're up to two."

"Right," Alice chuckles, "because I spend all the money on beer.

"But people always called us a bunch of cheap amateurs to the point where I really love the revenge of being successful now. I really love to make people eat their words, 'cos we were never really cheap. We were cheap, maybe, in the sense that we weren't performing it like we were thinking it. But the thought was always there."

Yet even sitting comfortably drinking beer on a hot summer's afternoon, Alice Cooper is anticipating his transformation into the mad Alice of the concerts.

"When I'm off the road I get a little tense and nervous because I don't get to do Alice. Back at the house in Connecticut it's real peaceful, and I can't stand serenity very much at all. It drives me crazy.

"But when I get up there onstage, I feel like I'm 16 again. I couldn't care less. I'm just out there to have fun."

He boogies gently in his chair.

"That's the whole idea of rock music, to have fun. That's it. A lot of people accuse us of trying to change the world because we did 'School's Out', and with 'Elected', they're going to say that, too. But we're not into politics. We don't even like politics; it's so boring.

"Yet in a way, rock is a lot of politics, because it affects parents. The main political thing about Alice Cooper is that you can hit a policeman in the head with a brick and the next day he's not going to feel it — right? But if his kid comes home wearing eye make-up — well, it's going to cut a little deeper than that."

Cooper smiles. Such a pleasant smile, such a genial, sweet guy. He really is. He finishes off his sketch of the frog, signs it, and gives it to me.

Now — can a man who spends his afternoons sketching frogs be all that bad?

"Of course," Alice grins, "if I need Alice, I can get Alice back any time I want it."

He proves this point by distorting his relaxed face into the homicidal maniac leer of the stage Alice , and lunges at me fiendishly with a pen.

Then, just before stabbing me in the chest (but not before nearly inducing a minor heart attack), crazy Alice disappears.

Suddenly the off-hours' rock star from wholesome, all-American Phoenix, Arizona, is lovably standing there.